US must stop imposing its will on other nations: Kissinger

Published: Friday, September 5, 2008, 18:15 [IST]

Subscribe to Oneindia News

St. Paul (Minnesota), Sept.5 : Former U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, 85, has said that it is high time that the United States stop behaving as the only super power in a unipolar world, and try to impose its will on other countries.

"As a nation we have to understand our reach, but also our limits," Kissinger told a packed audience of delegates and others at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

He urged the next president to go slow on promoting democracy around the world, one of the centerpieces of Bush's foreign policy, and suggested that lessons could be learned from his (Kissinger's) own Cold War encounters with the Soviet Union.

"Our major effort with the Soviets was not to democratize them, but to normalize them," Kissinger said, adding that it is a lesson worth thinking about as the next administration considers how to deal with China.

The debate over whether to seek democracy or stability is the single most important fault line in American foreign policy today," the New York Times quoted Richard N. Haass, who directed policy planning at the State Department in Bush's first term, as saying.

America should stop intervening inside the boundaries of sovereign states to bring about political change. Rather, it should pursue the 'humble' foreign policy that Bush talked about in 2000.

According to the NYT, there is a deep schism inside the Republican Party over how to engage with the rest of the world. The centerpiece of the debate is whether to lean toward the more confrontational, go-it-alone approach, or to adopt a somewhat chastened, let's-negotiate tone.